In case of a blade failure in a turbine engine, for example, because of a bird strike or the like, high unbalances occur in the rotor which, in the worst-case scenario, can damage or even destroy the bearing arrangement of the rotor as well as other static structures, including the engine mount. In order to rule this out to the greatest extent possible, mechanical safety devices can be used that radially release the rotor when a limit force is exceeded, so that unbalance forces can no longer occur. A bearing arrangement with a safety device comprising a predetermined breaking point that intentionally breaks when certain radial limit forces are exceeded and that decouples the rotor from the bearing arrangement is known, for example, from European patent application EP 1 199 441 A2.
A main problem of these safety devices, however, is the configuration of the predetermined breaking points since, with such predetermined breaking points, the limit force can only be set very imprecisely because of the component tolerances, the scatter of the material properties and the scatter range of the rupture mechanics. Consequently, such safety devices cannot be used in environments in which there are only relatively small differences between impermissible unbalance forces and the forces that are present during the normal operation of a turbomachine.